compdude has commented on the following diary entries

I definitely agree that the communication functions need to be made more visible in OSM. Why not just put a link to the mailing lists on the left-hand sidebar under "Community?" That would be a good first step forward. I bet that only a small minority of active mappers actually use the mailing lists, and maybe half of the mappers don't even know about them. I also agree that the "friend" thing should be changed to "follow", since you're really just tracking their edits.

I agree with you that it is subjective. One could easily argue that a library could be tagged as tourism=attraction, especially if it has a unique design or if it's a historic landmark. For example, the Central Library in Downtown Seattle is quite an attraction because of its unique design. Nevertheless, tagging a library as tourism=attraction is still a misuse of the tag.

I agree that it's not always best to have an area share nodes with a way for a road. The biggest reason is that it's harder to select what you want when you're editing the map, and so it's a nightmare to edit, as mentioned by others. The only time I have areas share the same node as a way is when I'm mapping parking lots. In that case I do want the parking lot to be attached to the road going into and through the parking lot.

Thanks for explaining that the stylesheet was so complicated. That would explain why nobody wants to fix these bugs. @firefishy, that video was really informative, and I'm glad Andy Allan is stepping up to simplify the stylesheet code. Hopefully that will allow more programmers to help and make it easier for people to learn how to work with the stylesheet.

About the time limit, I would hope that with the new programming language for the style sheet, we don't get unresolved bugs that are really old. I wouldn't want super-old bugs to be closed, perhaps the Trac website should have a feature where bugs older than 6 months would be outlined in red on the page that lists all the bugs, so that you can draw attention to programmers to encourage them to fix those bugs.

But, now that I know how complicated the stylesheet is, I will have more patience with you guys.

I tried Google Map Maker when it first was introduced and I didn't think it was as user-friendly as Potlatch 2. The one thing I did like about it was that the road designations were more in line with US usage. The one thing I've never really liked about OSM is that it isn't really oriented towards the US; instead it's more oriented towards the UK and Europe.

First of all I don't know why any normal person except a lost tourist would get off the freeway and then back on. Such a move would be something completely unexpected by other drivers, therefore it would be hazardous and reckless. You can get a ticket for reckless driving, you know.

I think it would be better if all roads were the same color shade. Motorways could remain blue, but all other roads could be a shade of red-orange to yellow. I agree that using green for trunk makes it blend in with forests and this can be quite annoying sometimes. If all roads were the same color shade or whatever there would be less of a problem.

Another thing that would help is to make the roads not look so "fat." This can be a problem, especially in densely-populated areas, where the roads just look like one big blob. For example, the secondary roads in Downtown Seattle look like a big orange blob. That just looks bad. If the roads weren't so fat, this wouldn't happen.

Glad that this is finally happening! While we will lose some data, we will be able to stop worrying about it and move on. We will have to spend time re-adding things, but hopefully that won't be a big deal.

I don't think it'd be a big deal to lose some building outlines to the license redaction bot. The most important thing is to retain the roads and things like restaurants, grocery stores, theaters, etc; as well as footpaths and bike paths. In my opinion, buildings don't matter as much.